David Webb and Dave Rubin dissect the dangers of echo chambers, arguing that cancel culture silences dissent and undermines American values. Webb counters accusations of self-hatred by defining his identity through Constitutional pride and Naval service rather than race, while criticizing leftists for cowardice and refusing to debate ideas. Citing Andrew Breitbart's philosophy of "more voices," they advocate for civil discourse over hostility, sharing anecdotes like a Bernie Sanders attendee admitting the math doesn't add up. Ultimately, modeling respectful debate offers a path to restore national pride against rising unreason. [Automatically generated summary]
Well, I can only do water right now because I got a bunch more interviews later, but...
There we go.
So I want to say that you were the perfect guy for this chapter.
We tried to select people that obviously it made sense for each one.
But this idea of stop hating straight white men, America and Western values, when you and I met, everyone that's read the book already knows the story.
I was a lefty.
You were on the right.
We met in the hall of Sirius XM.
We struck a conversation.
You said, hey, why don't you come on to my show?
We'll debate some stuff.
We began doing that.
We did it pretty frequently.
We'd go out for drinks after, go out for dinner, and there was no need to hate anyone.
But David Webb, I'm a simple man.
Explain to me how it is that you don't hate straight white men.
And think about what they've tried to do to you when you're out and you're speaking, the cancel culture.
We're going to shut Dave Rubin down.
Well, first of all, you and I remember someone that most people I hope will get more familiar with if you don't know him, Andrew Breitbart.
Andrew said, more voices, not less.
Americans have said that throughout our history, even in our most Visceral, maybe vitriolic disagreements.
But today it's cancelled.
Today you don't get an opportunity.
You actually don't get an opportunity to disagree today.
And that's something fundamentally anti-American.
It's what other people look at us from around the world and say, I want to be there because I can do that.
My friends, my family overseas, they love the fact that Americans can argue with each other, come up with 21 different, or maybe more, opinions on something, and still realize that we're Americans.
Can you talk a little bit about, I mentioned three wake-up points in the book, and one of them is about you, and I was at the Young Turks, and we're watching a clip, and there's David Webb, and they didn't know I was friends with you, and they're calling you an Uncle Tom, and a sellout, and a self-hating black man, and all of those things.
Can you talk a little bit about the slings and arrows that you've taken because you're pro-American, because you believe in the Constitution, because you believe in freedom?
I always tell people when they say, I hate the phrase black conservative.
You're a conservative, you happen to be black, big damn whoop.
I mean, you know what I mean?
It's not that it has nothing to do with your identity, but you are a man first, a human first.
But can you talk a little bit about just That it's just because you're sort of pro-America that they feel that they can use your identity against you.
unidentified
Well, you know, the first thing, Dave, is... I'm sorry, not your identity, your immutable identity.
Anybody walking down the street can see your skin color, my skin color.
Therefore, it really doesn't matter.
What they can see is what's in our minds and in our hearts.
I've had these values since my teen years, and I developed more along with the learning and education that comes with growing a little bit older and learning more things.
I'm a Republican.
You know, I'm someone who's proud of the Constitution, proud of the country and our culture.
And that's why I am who I am, because I'm proud of it.
I love my country so much, and I rarely talk about this, but at 17 years old, I began a process of applying to the Naval Academy.
I was decided on colleges.
And yes, because of my family history, which goes back to the Revolution.
I'm actually a son of the American Revolution.
I'm the great, great grandson of a man who led a revolution in Jamaica, a slave rebellion.
I grew up with that pride.
I knew who I was.
So I raised my right hand.
I served only a short time.
I went to school.
I make no bones about that.
But I wanted to show my love for the country because of what I wanted to do also for myself.
Which is very much a part of what we do in America.
You can serve the country, you can serve yourself, you can serve your community.
It's not just about military, it's about just being a good human being.
And we've lost that too much, but I'll tell you, I'm gonna shock people.
I disagree with the overarching narrative by the cacophony of, frankly, overrated voices who say that America's bad, millennials are bad, boomers are bad, all of this is bad.
Come on, you and I travel the country.
There are so many good people in this country.
I've been in the Deep South.
I've been in rooms with racists.
I've interviewed a senior member of the Ku Klux Klan.
I've been to Vidor, Texas.
I've been to so many parts of this country, and I've seen black, white, every other dynamic play out, politically, culturally, you name it.
And you know what?
I'm still here.
Because there are more good people in Tupelo than they would tell you in some parts of the media.
You got some tricks on how we can get people out of this mindset?
Because the reason I titled the chapter like this, Stop Hating Straight White Men, Stop Hating America, is that it seems like it's just like this easy thing to catch when you're a young person.
You live in this privileged place, which I believe is the only privilege there is in America, is American privilege.
It's pretty freaking spectacular.
But they seem like they're very easy ideas to catch.
that make you feel morally good or something like that.
What kind of success have you had, you know, deconverting people from that?
And I'll tell you, I've been up against some of the most hardcore people out there, as you know.
The best thing you can do is give somebody a dose of reality and don't expect them to change right away.
I've been to a Bernie Sanders rally and had a discussion with a college student during his last presidential run.
And by the time I was finished with the conversation, she said, you know what?
The math doesn't add up.
I said, good, go figure it out for yourself.
I don't try to convert people.
I talk to them.
I asked them what's important to them.
And I think if you engage people by saying what's important to you, in other words, we're going down a highway.
There's 2 cars.
We're in different lanes.
We're going down a highway.
There's a destination at the end, but we have different lanes and different approaches to get into that same destination.
So does mine make sense?
Does yours make sense?
And if we can figure out that somewhere in between these two lanes is a middle lane where we can have the discussion, then maybe we can understand more about what really matters rather than focusing on our individual choices.
One of the things I've been getting asked a lot while I'm on this book tour is why is it that people on the right, say conservatives, libertarians, old school liberals, seem much more open to the debate and the discussion than people on the left?
I have my own theories.
I want to hear yours, but before I let you jump in on that, one of the things that I've noticed is every time I do your show, when you throw it to the callers, almost every single caller says the same exact thing, which is, hey, they'll be saying it to either one of us.
They'll say, Dave or David or both of you guys, I don't agree with you on everything, but I'm happy you're having this conversation.
Do you think there is an actual philosophical or psychological reason that people on the right seem to be better at that right now than people on the left?
What do you make about the middle part of this, which is that it's, okay, we say straight white men, Western values, but I think the part that I didn't put in the title that I think is the underlying of all of this is sort of just the endless attack on Christians.
That we see that it's just like, that's like just allowed.
And I'm not, look, you, I think you should be able to basically say whatever you want and all that stuff that, you know, my feelings on free speech, but just sort of like the mainstream, like if you mock Christians, you are applauded for it.
While if you were to mock any other group, you would be lauded.
Are you hopeful that we can reset some of this stuff?
I mean, people always ask me if I'm an optimist or a pessimist, and I always say, well, I'm a world-weary optimist because I consider myself a realist first.
But I don't think I could wake up and write a book and do everything that I do if I didn't believe that what we do can fix some of this stuff, can restore pride in America, an understanding of freedom and liberty, and all of those things.
I suspect you're ballparking in the same spot as me on that, right?
I'm not only the eternal optimist, and look, we all face challenges.
There are times when I'm sitting alone or I'm thinking about something, and it gets me down.
It does.
You know, I'm human.
I sit there and I look at it and I go, how the hell do I change this person's mind or these corporate people to think?
Or at least maybe not change their mind, but get them to think outside themselves.
And as soon as I go there, I remember basic lessons.
This country, this culture, this Western value system, is founded on laws that are set in place to protect all men and women, to protect societies.
And yeah, our constitution is different than the British, than the Australian, than other countries that are in the Western hemisphere of the globe.
But for the most part, we value the chance to be who you are, the chance to debate someone, the chance for freedom.
And that's when I remember the basic rules.
The basic rules are we've got more in common in this life.
And if I don't like someone or disagree with someone, and I'm not pretending that there aren't really bad people out there who need to be off and out of the conversation.
But if I vehemently disagree with you, I still think fundamentally, we have the right to live together and exist together in a society like ours.
And you know what?
That debate actually excites me.
And then all of a sudden, I'm out of that dark place.
And I'm out of that moment when I'm so worried.
That I become more hopeful and I'm more hopeful because of guys like you, like me.
And if we exercise that responsibility more and more, then there's other people that will join in with us because we are more than them and we're going to win this.
Web, I know we should probably end it there because it was so perfect, but I want to bring up one other moment with you because it went viral and I know that most of my audience has heard it before, but it's worth repeating again because it actually captures the essence of this chapter more than anything else.
Can you explain what happened in your radio experience with Areva Martin, who is a progressive, who I actually had on The Rubin Report way back when, many years ago.
She's a perfectly nice lady from my experiences with her.
But you were on the radio with her, and something interesting happened, and it gets to the exact purpose of why I titled this chapter this.
Smart woman, Ivy League education lawyer, analyst for CNN.
Their team reached out and wanted to come on the show to talk about the nomination of Justice Kavanaugh, now Justice Kavanaugh.
We have the discussion.
In short, they picked me.
I didn't pick them.
But because the discussion went to something which parroted or mirrored what's supposed to be the, you know, the white male Dynamic white male conservative dynamic without any hesitation.
It was so easy for her to say to me, David, because you're a white male, you have white privilege.
Now, think about that for anybody watching this for a second.
I'm going to guess, you know, they're not white cheeks and maybe we got way high.
Well, it's so fascinating because obviously it was radio, not video.
So she assumes that you're white by your thoughts.
Then when you say she threw her team under the bus, her response when you said, well, I happen to be a black man, her response was, oh, my people gave me the wrong information.
As if, as if any of us, when we go on a show, they hand us a thing and it's like, are you talking to a white guy?
He's 34.
You know, he's heterosexual, blah, blah, blah.
But the reason I wanted you to mention that again is it's such a perfect encapsulation of the whole chapter because her implication was your thoughts had to be the thoughts of white men, thus they were wrong.
And then the second you confront her on the truth, she then throws her own people under the bus as opposed to rethinking her thoughts.
And if I'm not mistaken, you did invite her to chat after that, but nothing came of it.
She said on the show at that time I would come back because I would give her the microphone.
I would give her an hour.
I wanted her to come in studio so we could have a reasonable discussion on this.
But you know, I've been dealing with this my whole life and I've watched it get worse.
So let's go back to the subtitle of your book.
And by the way, I borrowed the subtitle to write in one of my articles.
Thinking for yourself in an age of unreason.
I've watched an evolution of the wrong voices getting a big platform in college, my young years, the decades since to where we are now.
These are people who should not have a public forum.
Not because I want to shut them down, but they don't deserve one.
They haven't earned it.
And the fact that all my life people have told me, you shouldn't be.
My question is always, tell me Why I shouldn't be.
I didn't see in the books where black people had to be Democrats, or on the left, and white people, especially old white people, had to be Republicans, Evangelicals, and on the right.
I saw a part where this country has a flag that we pledge our allegiance to, that we raise our right hands for those who serve in the military, but that we all across this country stand up and respect as a way that says, you know, this has a representation, the field of blue, The stars, the blood that was shed so that we have the opportunity to disagree with each other.